After the screenplay had been completed, the Disney studio put the project into turnaround, then after this, every major Hollywood studio turned it down. Writer-director Paul Mazursky declared that the various movie studios thought the story was "too Jewish".
The only non-Best Picture Oscar nominee for the 1990 year to be nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award.
After the picture went into development hell when Disney and all the major Hollywood studios passed on the picture, executive producer Joe Roth read the finished screenplay and took the project to Morgan Creek Pictures. Roth was able to green-light the picture with a budget of US $9.5 million and and a distribution deal with the Twentieth Century Fox studio who had previously turned down the project.
To recreate 1949 Manhattan within its evolved 1989 landscape production crew had to remove many television antennae and contemporary street lighting in order to create 1940s Manhattan streetscapes. Fire escapes were also covered over with mid 20th Century clothing.
The film is set in 1949. The movie was made and first released in 1989 which was forty years after the time period in which it is set. The picture is also set about four years before the 1953 year of director Paul Mazurksy's earlier film, 'Next Stop, Greenwich Village' (1976), with both pictures being set in the same place of New York City.